Silver Hill Hospital, itself a collection of architecturally important buildings, bought River House—the structure closest to the road, seen first on the right for motorists traveling north on Valley Road—in 1945.
A 1917-era photograph from the interior of River House, now part of Silver Hill Hospital’s campus on Valley Road. Contributed photo” credit=”
For years, it served as the residence for the psychiatric hospital’s president. In the mid-1980s, Silver Hill started using it as a house for patients, and about two years ago, staff members realized that a reconfiguration was needed, according to Liz Moore, the hospital’s COO.
“But we wanted to maintain the architectural integrity of the house because it’s just so beautiful,” Moore said form the ballroom at the Country Club of New Canaan on Sunday evening as dozens of residents and town leaders gathered for an event recognizing that preservation-minded mentality.
This is the same room—see the fireplace—in the River House at Silver Hill Hospital, updated last year. Contributed photo” credit=”
“We are using the architect, Richard Turlington, that we’ve used for a number of our projects and the same construction team that we’ve also used on a number of our projects,” Moore told NewCananaite.com. “We did a renovation that we feel is architecturally true to the original character of the house. Where there were leaded glass windows, we replaced them with windows that look exactly like the leaded glass, but were thermally sound.”
The article continues below this slideshow—to pause on a slide or get caption information, just move your mouse over it.
[acx_slideshow name=”2014 New Canaan Preservation Alliance Awards”]
Moore and Silver Hill were among the 10 individuals, families or organizations recognized for their work by the New Canaan Preservation Alliance at the nonprofit’s annual Awards Ceremony. The organization’s mission is “to advocate for the preservation of the town’s character-defining historic architectural and natural environments.”
Rose Scott Long and Mimi Findlay of the New Canaan Preservation Alliance.” credit=”Michael Dinan / NewCanaanite.com
During the free, roughly 2.5-hour event, attendees mingled over wine—and eventually, a birthday cake in honor of the NCPA’s seven years—and heard from a series of speakers, including First Selectman Rob Mallozzi, NCPA Founding President Mimi Findlay and special guest Helen Higgins, executive director of the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation.
In his comments, Mallozzi described the town government’s relationship with the NCPA as one that has evolved into a “special partnership.”
More than 125 attendees gathered May 4 for the 2014 New Canaan Preservation Alliance Awards, held in the ballroom at the Country Club of New Canaan.” credit=”Michael Dinan / NewCanaanite.com
“They have really partnered with the town to protect what I think we all value about this community, something that is deep in my heart, deep in the hearts of most of us in our community,” Mallozzi said.
New Canaan’s highest elected official, Mallozzi also thanked those in attendance who had put their time and resources behind preservation and said they “couldn’t have picked a better community to invest in.”
Renovations and additions to a 1904 Colonial Revival house and property has won Austin Patterson Disston Architects of Southport a New Canaan Preservation Alliance 2014 Historic Preservation Award. Under the design guidance of partner McKee Patterson, AIA, the house, located at 621 Canoe Hill Road in New Canaan, was extensive renovated and added to with a “conscious preservation ethic,” notes the NCPA. The citation goes on to say the project “retains most of the building’s historic fabric and character. The minor additions were complimentary to the original symmetry of the house … following the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation.”” credit=”
In thanking the leadership from the NCPA, including Findlay and President Rose Scott Long, Mallozzi said: “If New Canaan didn’t have an organization like this, didn’t have folks like you that were interested in preserving, we wouldn’t be New Canaan. We would look like everyone else, and that’s the last thing I want, the last thing you want, the last thing anyone wants.”
During much of the awards ceremony, attendees heard from Findlay, who tapped her encyclopedic knowledge of historic properties in town—as well as her husband, Dave, who provided highly responsive projector help—to describe each individual property recognized. A full list of award recipients and their properties can be found at the bottom of this article, followed by a list of preservation resources and then histories of each property from Findlay.
New Canaan Selectman Beth Jones was among the New Canaan town and business leaders in attendance at the 2014 New Canaan Preservation Alliance Awards Ceremony at the Country Club of New Canaan.” credit=”Michael Dinan / NewCanaanite.com
Higgins in her address recognized Mallozzi, Findlay and New Canaan Historical Society Executive Director Janet Lindstrom, one of several town leaders in attendance, including Selectman Beth Jones and New Canaan Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Tucker Murphy.
A former board chairman at the Connecticut Humanities Council and president of the Connecticut League of History Organizations, Higgins said said that, for years, the Connectional and National Historic Trusts have felt New Canaan “needed an organization whose direct sole mission was protection of this town’s historic resources—and by extension, its community character.”
“One that could directly address the increasing challenges to tearing down historic houses, to protecting the integrity of the downtown, to advocating for preservation and reuse of buildings on public property,” she said. “We saw the need for an organization to pursue a sole agenda of preservation.”
Higgins also said that for municipalities that form a core constituency that backs a local preservation alliance, such as New Canaan’s, grant money may become available—and she gave examples from Lebanon and New Britain.
The NCPA rises to meet its mission through efforts that include working with youth in town as well as business and government leaders, conducting a Historic Architectural Survey in New Canaan, running workshops on historic registry, tracking land use and development in town and more generally serving as a resource for encouraging what advocates call “sensitive growth.”
Meg Marciano, owner of 299 South Ave.” credit=”Terry Dinan
That phrase likely strikes a chord for Meg Marciano, a New Canaan resident who recently learned of the NCPA’s activities and was in attendance at the awards ceremony. Marciano most recently has worked to restore a home known to many New Canaanites, her current residence at 299 South Ave., the former Brooks Sanatorium.
Asked to describe her interest in the NCPA and its work, Marciano told NewCanaanite.com that she wants to become involved with Planning & Zoning “and making sure they’re making the right decisions that that houses they are building now are people are going to want to preserve 100 years from now.”
Meg Marciano at the May 4, 2014 New Canaan Preservation Alliance Awards Ceremony, held at the Country Club of New Canaan.” credit=”Michael Dinan / NewCanaanite.com
“That’s a key thing,” she continued. “And I think a lot of the things that are being approved, I don’t think there’s as much foresight as I would like to see.”
Marciano herself knows that preservation, including renovation with the principles of preservation in mind, often are more expensive than total rebuilding, “but I do feel it’s so important.”
“Especially for a quaint town like this, where you want to celebrate the past and that is a draw for many people,” she said. “So for me it’s twofold: It’s definitely looking back. But a look forward, as well.”
What follows is a list of recipients for 2014 New Canaan Preservation Alliance Awards for “Outstanding Preservation of an Historic Site,” together with descriptions of the awards granted. In accepting their awards, many of the property owners, architects and builders (see slideshow above) spoke to their respect for history, visceral connections to New Canaan and eagerness to see the town’s character and heritage preserved through its homes.
- Gretchen and Richard Fedeli, President’s Preservation Award for 1 Wahackme Lane. “This award celebrates preserved structures, following the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards, retaining the greatest amount of historic fabric and the building’s historic form, features, and detailing as the have evolved over time. Updates and changes do not impact the exterior of the building. The interior can be updated for contemporary living standards, with the original design changed as little as possible.”
- Jennifer Ahern, Trustees’ Rehabilitation Award for 120 Main St. “This award comments sensitively rehabilitated structures, following the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation, while retaining the building’s historic character. Many of the original details of doors, windows, moldings and siding and some design elements of the interior have been maintained and additions are compatible and complementary.”
- Martha and Ed Bases, Trustees’ Rehabilitation Award for 160 Chichester Road.
- Brian Lewis at elm restaurant, Trustees’ Rehabilitation Award for 75 Elm St.
- Silver Hill Hospital, Trustees’ Rehabilitation Award for 143 Valley Road.
- Yvonne and Kenneth Hannan, Jr., Trustees’ Rehabilitation Award for 621 Canoe Hill Road.
- Amanda Gillen and Keith Carter, Preservation of Community Character Award for 112 North Wilton Road. “This award recognizes renovations that essentially maintain the historic public view of a building—its shape and selected architectural feaures—thereby continuing to contribute to the character of New Canaan and preserve its sense of place in the streetscape.”
- Jodi and Richard Stiffelman, Preservation of Community Character Award for 284 Park St.
- Jeanne McDonagh, Education Award. “This award recognizes an individual for incorporating the theme of preservation into the curriculum and for fostering a connection between students and our shared past.”
- Kip Farrell, Preservation Leadership Award. “This award honors an individual who has accomplished significant work that has impacted preservation or who has brought preservation to the forefront of our community’s awareness.”
Resources for Preservation Projects:
284 Park St.
- Greg and Marzena, Piwko and Piwko Designs
- Rob Rizzo, Cobble Court Interiors
- Peter Kostyk, carpentry
112 North Wilton Road
- Amanda Gillem Interiors
621 Canoe Hill Road
- MacKee Patterson, Austin Patterson Disston, Architects
- (Ms.) Marti Cowan, Project Manager, Austin Patterson Disston
- Todd Mendes, Barn Restoration
- Diane Devore Associates, Landscape Design
- Paul Stewart Rankin, Interior Design
- Scott Hobbs, Hobbs Inc., Contractor
143 Valley Road, Silver Hill Hospital
- Richard Turlington Architects (RTA)
- Paul Prenoveau, Pres PAC Group. Contractors
160 Chichester Road
- Craig Bassam and Scott Fellows Architects
- John Fumfgeld, Project Mgr, East Coast Structures
- Alan Peterman, Custom woodwork
- Ken Jones, Structural Engineer
75 Elm Street, The Elm Restaurant
- Rick Hoag, Frederick William Hoag, Architects
1 Wahackme Lane
- GP Construction, Contractor
- Tori Legge, Stirling Mills Design
The following histories of each property recognized at the New Canaan Preservation Alliance Awards Ceremony, were prepared by Mimi Findlay:
160 Chichester Road
In the 18th century there was no Wahackme Road, although there was a suggestion of its heading east on a sketch map “Proprietary Division of Common Land in Canaan Parish 1698-1800” as envisioned by S.B. Hoyt and T.W. Benedict in 1944[1]. The dotted lines head toward a land grant to Deodate Waterbury (of Jelliff Mill fame) and James Weed, with a house along the west bank of the Noroton River. The Town Hall maps by Walter Bradnee Kirby in 1934, depicts the village also in 1834, and he shows a road reaching from Ponus Ridge to Weed Street. The 1856 Map by Richard Clark shows Wahackme Road connecting the two north south highways. Starting from between the D. Davenport and E. Lounsbury houses on Weed Street, and heading east end, past a J.E. Weed house to its north, crossing over the Noroton River and past a W. Comstock house on its eastern bank on the south side of the road, it reached Weed Street, between the properties of F.S. Chichester on the north corner (now Daniel Radman, architect) and W. Comstock on the south, now replaced by Irwin Park.
The Beers Atlas of 1867 shows Wahackme Road and the J.Z. Weed house still on the north side with a dotted line going from it, north to Greenley Road, which eventually would be Chichester Road.
By the 1880’s New Canaan was evolving from a waning farming, saw and grist-mill working, and shoe-making community to a destination for an influx of summer visitors, due to the proximity of New York City on the railroad, completed to New Canaan in 1868. Large summer Country Place estates were built, and the Golf club was established. More residents arrived after World War I and an eclectic mix of revival style houses – smaller Cape Cod saltboxes, Federal and Tudor revival houses, on newly developed streets, were quickly put up near the center of town. New Canaan had transformed into a suburban bedroom community and 50% of the working males in 1930 commuted to New York City.[2] In 1932 zoning was established, with the commercial zone delineated around the center of the existing village and the industrial zone around the railroad tracks near the station. Railroad Avenue, between Park and Weed Streets, was renamed Elm Street. In 1934 a woman and a Democrat, Margaret Bailey, was elected First Selectman, the first in the history of Fairfield Country[3]. In the 1930s twenty new roads opened. Due to the pressures exerted by Robertson Ward, a new architect in town, the paving included the old Chichester path, which had become impassable. He lived on this path and was the architect of New Canaan’s first “modern” house on a steep hillside at 909 West Road in 1937, now demolished[4].
Following the Depression and World War II Americans began moving away from urban cores and into suburban areas to raise their families where cheaper land was available and they could “create a new life by moving into a newly constructed dream house complete with all of the modern conveniences.” It was in this spirit of the times that the architects, later nicknamed The Harvard Five, decided to relocate to New Canaan in the 1940s”. Starting with Elliot Noyes, they were Marcel Breuer, John J Johansen, Landis Gores, Philip Johnson, and Victor Chris-Janer.
One of the advantages the modernists had over the more traditional builders was their choice of sites – rocky, hilly, or deeply wooded sites – as all their internal special flow was predicated on having a view. In 1949, the first Modern House Tour was arranged by Eliot Noyes, and it attracted architects and young families, over 1,000 visitors. They continued almost every other year throughout the 1950s. In the mid 50s John Black Lee partnered with Hugh Smallen to buy twenty acres of land along Chichester Road. The land was subdivided into six lots and sold within ten years with the provision that all of the owners had to build Modern houses.
Hugh Smallen’s own house, built in 1957, shared the defining characteristics of the New Canaan Modern: one-story structure of modest size with flat roof, at least one glass wall facing a natural feature of rocks or river, and on a hillside site to allow for livable basement space. Inside they had an open plan but zoned for pubic, private, and utility spaces. Adult spaces – bedrooms and studies, were often separated from children’s spaces – bedrooms and playroom. Most did not included live-in rooms for servants, except possibly a maid’s or guest bedroom. A central core contained utility space, kitchens and bathrooms, often lit by skylights. The social spaces frequently were internally divided by partial-height partition walls, cabinets, and fireplaces, to allow light and air to flow through the house. The architects blended the interior and the exterior by extending walls into the landscape and adding decks and balconies to the more secluded elevations.
The Smallen house has a split-level plan with parents quarters half a flight up from the living spaces, and the children’s bedrooms a half a flight below these public spaces. Borglum and Meek were the builders, one of a handful capable of using the new materials and finishing techniques specified by the Modern architects[5].
The recent renovations repaired structural problems, replaced single pane glass walls, combined bedrooms to create larger ones with more closets, and installed modern bathrooms. The greatest change was the removal of a small rear wing and the creation of a new wing of contrasting materials incorporating a new, larger kitchen and family room, with space underneath for offices or playrooms. The house appears to look the same from the street because the large wing extends behind the rear of the house, overlooking the woodlands. The craftsmanship and detailing of the metal and woodwork is exquisite.
[1] New Canaan Historical Society Annual 1992-1993, p9
[2] King, Mary Louise, Portrait of New Canaan, New Canaan Historical Society 1981, p294.
[3] King, pp310-312
[4] King, p308
[5] Building Conservation Associates, New Canaan Mid-Century Modern Houses, CT Commission on Culture and Tourism, 2009 pp 16-22; 296-299.
284 Park Street
Park Street was laid out by the Proprietors of Norwalk in 1738, running from Old Stamford Road up to God’s Acre, just below the meeting house. It was named after 1850 when the gravestones were moved to Lakeview Cemetery and by 1867 God’s Acre was named a park[1].
New Canaan Land Records indicate that this house was built by Irving Lockwood on land he acquired from W. Stanley Lockwood, a proprietor of Lockwood and Keeler, a meat and vegetable market. The house probably went up shortly after the land purchase was made in 1885[2]. Lockwood was the co-owner, with his brother, of a livery business, whom he soon bought bought out. He was also a real entrepreneur.
He bought a coal business, and some land near the railroad tracks for his office and stables. He then expanded to coal, wood, lumber, sand and road materials, forerunner of the New Canaan Fuel and Lumber Co. He owned a 650-acre farm in Southbury where he raised over a hundred head of cattle, a 150-acre farm on West Road near the Lockwood homestead where he was born, raised pigs and cattle on another farm on Norwalk Road, and owned woodlands in different parts of town. In 1895 he built a large Queen Anne house with turret at 190 Main Street[3]. In 1902 he married Minnie Ward Bowen from Brooklyn, and had two daughters, Isabel and Viola. By 1910 they were living in the Main Street house with their Polish maid, Annie Boctitus[4]. At his untimely death in 1919 from diabetes complications, he was living on South Avenue, survived by his widow and two daughters, and is buried in Lakeview Cemetery.[5]
On the Park Street house, facing the street, the front entrance was through an enclosed porch and there was a large addition at the left, both added in the 1930’s by Myra Valentine. Her concrete front stoop had an iron railing and steps to the ground level. There was an open porch whose roof was supported with round columns on the south side of the house, with an entrance door next to the chimney and steps leading down to the driveway. An addition in the back, with a bay window, separated the main block of the house from an attached garage with balustrade. The tax card noted “In rear of house abrupt rise”.
The current owners have removed the side entrance and stairs, added to the rear of the house by removing the old garage and adding a mudroom and two-car garage to the south, against the rise. There now is a thoroughly modern kitchen, with seating areas, behind the old house, flowing into a TV area and a dining room where the bay used to be. The large living room is still in the 1930’s addition with repaired fireplace and replaced west-facing window. Dormers were raised in the attic necessitating more height to the repointed chimney but allowing more bedrooms on the third floor.
The cross gabled Queen Anne design is still evident, now with an Arts and Crafts style stained entrance door and upper side lights, square porch posts with molded caps, and balusters square in plan with a handsome additional stained rail for code requirements.
“Although it has been altered by additions, the Lockwood residence retains its essential cross gable format and remains one the few surviving Victorian-era buildings on Park Street”[6] The survey was written prior the recent renovations, but fortunately it is still true today.
[1] New Canaan Historical Society Annual Vol 5 Number2, p129.
[2] Carley, Rachel, Historic Resources Inventory 2012
[3] Bedford, Steven, Historic Resources Inventory 1987
[4] US Fed Census 1910
[5] Obituary, New Canaan Advertiser, 3.6.19.
[6] Carley Op.cit
621 Canoe Hill Road
The 1944 sketch map of New Canaan, Proprietary Division of the Common Land in Canaan Parish 1698-1800, as imagined by S.B Hoyt and T.W. Benedict, show that Thomas Benedict received grants in 1695 and 1711, a D. Monro received one in 1709, along the Smith Ridge at the intersection of Canoe Hill Road. By the 1856 Richard Clark Map land in that area was owned by Hoyt, Smith and/or Monro. Finally in the Beers Atlas of 1867 there were two houses at the corner both owned by E.J. Richards.
Ebenezer J. and Julia Richards are found in the 1870 Federal census in New Canaan, living with Samuel and Mary Lockwood, the Lockwood’s 5 children, and a domestic servant. They are farmers. Samuel R. Lockwood married Mary Hoyt in Oct 1860 in New Canaan.
Ten years later, Mary Lockwood, 49, is the head of household, two sons work on the farm and Ebenezer is still listed as a farmer, while Julia now has consumption. Whether this is the E. J. Richards owning the two houses on the property is not clear without a title search. “..in the early days of [New Canaan] Parish James Richards… was one of the largest landowners in this district, and owned all the northern end of Smith Ridge. His descendants continued to be numerous on the Ridge until the end of the nineteenth century for in 1895 the last one lived at ‘Jim Richard’s Corner’ as the present Canoe Hill Corner was known.”[1]
William E.C. Bradley (1846-1900) purchased the corner tract of land in 1894 and he and his wife, Anna M. Bradley, were living there in 1900 with three grown children, her sister, domestic staff of three servants one of whom was a farm laborer, and 2 boarders, one being the gardener. Bradley was a “merchant’ in the census and Mary Louise King, a descendant, identified him as “being in the textile business.”[2] However, he died in October of that year and was buried in Lakeview Cemetery. Three years later their house burned to the ground and Anna Bradley engaged the distinguished Hartford architect, Edward T. Hapgood, to design her a grand summer place, completed in 1904.
In 1910 Anna Bradley was living there with her sister, both “having their own incomes,” her daughter Mary, elder son William A., a magazine editor, his wife, and son Robert H., a Stocks and Bond salesman. They had two female servants.
After her mother sold the house in 1918, Mary Bradley became an interior decorator and later married the pastor of the Congregational Church, Merrill Clarke. Mary renovated and restored the manse, then in 1931 engaged the Colonial Revival architect, Richard Henry Dana, to located two antique houses and move them to Canoe Hill Road, on property east of number 621. In 1932 Mary Bradley Clarke, was affiliated with Bradley and Olcott, Interior Decorators, at the Canoe Hill location, presumably overseeing the reconstruction of these antique houses[3].
As described in Landmarks of New Canaan “Amid hardship and despair, private charity was enormous, and largely anonymous, while those who had the means created such jobs as they could. To give work to carpenters, masons and painters, Mrs. Merrill Clarke, wife of the Congregational minister, had a 1795 house at Harwinton, Connecticut carefully taken down, moved to New Canaan, and reassembled on her father’s former summer estate, at 585 Canoe Hill Rd.[4] A second antique house was also moved onto the lot further east. The Clarkes lived in the “Harwinton House” for many years, and it has recently been dismantled and taken back to Harwinton for re-erection, when the present owners decided to demolish it.
In 1918 Louis Engel bought the Bradley house and, noticing that it was “in an extremely wet place,” moved it back three hundred feet on the ridge, up against an already built two-story kitchen wing. The old chimney in the center of the house was removed. He noted the prior existence of old barns still standing, having been on the property when it had been a milk farm.[5] As he is not listed in the Federal census for 1910 or 1920 I assume he only summered here and was not a resident of New Canaan, as the Bradleys had been. A later description of the house claims that “it had never been occupied during the winter months, November to April. The house was not insulated for winter, had a coal burning furnace in the basement with steam heat in the bedrooms, bathroom, living and dining rooms. The kitchen had a coal burning stove.”[6]
The Engels sold the property to Patsy and Jack Morgan in 1944, who then sold it to Kenneth H. and Anne B. Hannon on Nov 14, 1952: the house, the garage, the barn, and the cottage. They began extensive renovations to make it a year-round house. “In 1955 or 56 one of two cottages at the corner was moved away and is now 834 Valley Road”[7]
[1] Miller, Edith “Harwinton House the Merrill Clarke House,” Landmarks of New Canaan,” New Canaan Historical Society 1951 p. 192
[2] King, Mary Louise Portrait of New Canaan, New Canaan Historical Society
[3] New Canaan Directories 1932
[4] Op. Cit p. 303
[5] Engel, Louis, Letter 1934, in the House File at the NCHS.
[6] Hannan, Kenneth, Handwritten Letter 2003, in the House File at the NCHS.
[7] Bradley, Robert H. Jr, Letter
1 Wahackme Lane
Wahackme Road, running between two ancient northwest paths from the coast inland, Ponus Ridge and Weed Street, was officially laid out by Stamford in 1752 and was named “highway.” Eventually it was named Chichester for the owner of the house at the corner of Weed Street, F.E. Chichester, listed on the map of 1856. At that time there was a J. W. Weed residence on the path, west of the river, and W. Comstock on the east bank. The change to the present name was instigated by a St. John descendent who moved to New Canaan from Alabama, and who thought it should be name after the grandson (she believed) of Chief Ponus, Wachamene. In 1908 it had been called Mackemo.
The Chichester name was finally honored by the official opening and paving of the ancient highway, north to Greenley Road from Wahackme Road, in the early 1930’s.
Wahackme LANE was officially opened in 1946 as Wahackme Woodands Lane, [1] even though there had been a house built at the end of it in 1910[2]. In the 1938 Fairfield County Atlas, the map of New Canaan shows a dirt road named Wahackme Lane, with the thirteen-acre Lucy J. Smalley estate at the end, and with William Lusk and C.D. Andrews residences flanking the path. At the entrance to the path were the 4-acre lot of the Lucy Smalley Estate on the south and the Kiessling property on the north corner.
Calvin Kiessling, architect, was born in Boston and practiced there a few years, designing Carnegie Libraries in Davenport Iowa (1904, demolished in 1966 due to unstable conditions underneath the foundation), and in Colorado Springs (1905, renovated in 2002). The latter was made of red brick with limestone trim in the grand Beaux-Arts style. He soon moved to New York City and formed Davis, McGrath and Kiessling, designing houses and public buildings.
In 1921 he moved to New Canaan[3], soon remodeling farmhouses; one a 1752 house at 968 Weed Street and the other, the Bouton-Keeler-Kiessling
House at an unknown address on “the East Avenue hill” possibly now demolished.[4]
In 1922 a group of New Canaan residents, lead by Kiessling, proposed a plan to rebuild part of the business section with a view “to making the town more beautiful and to provide a village green.” They intended to erect a Playhouse and motion picture theater on what was then called Railroad Avenue. “This attractive Colonial structure will form the Railroad Avenue end of the proposed village improvement plan as proposed by Mr. Kiessling, with the First National Bank [big brick building next to Town Hall] at the Main Street end.[5]” The Playhouse was built the following year, using Kiessling’s Colonial Revival style designs of red brick, white trim and a cupola. It was featured in the November 1924 issue of The Architect.[6] His obituary claimed “He is credited with starting the colonial design of New Canaan’s business district”. John Brotherhood formed the Colonial Company, a real estate development company, by 1926, to build retail and office commercial structures on Railroad Ave, renamed Elm street ten years later. The 1930 Colonial Revival style Post Office was designed by Alfred Mausolff to complement the Playhouse across the street.
By 1929 Kiessling had renovated at least the two historic houses mentioned above, adding Mt. Vernon-like shallow two-story porticos by extending the roof line, and incorporating outbuildings as additions. According to the Advertiser’s obituary he received great acclaim with pictures of the Weed Street residence published in ”The Architect” in 1924, in “House and Garden” in1927, and in the thirteenth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica as “an example of colonial architecture at its best.”
He then turned his attentions to designing his own house, and chose a vernacular English cottage style, of stone and slate, part of the Romantic movement in 1930’s architectural styles for small houses, practiced in
New Canaan by Frank J. Forster, Walter Bradnee Kirby and Alfred Mausolff.
The house at 1 Wahackme Lane has an unusually open plan for that era: a shallow vestibule faces a wide set of steps to a great hall with stone fireplace in the center of the house, flanked by built-in book shelves. Opposite the fireplace and to the right of the great hall is a long, two-story barnlike living room with barn siding between the rafters. Straight ahead is a dining area overlooking the garden, with a large bay window and built-in shelves and cabinets.
In plan the first floor rooms stick out as wings of a pin-wheel, radiating from the fireplace. The bedrooms are on different levels, one allowing a window to view over the living room, with children’s areas separated from adult sleeping quarters. The open special flow and multiple levels are some characteristics that would be used by the Modern architects in New Canaan in the coming decades.
By 1932 Kiessling listed himself a Landscape Architect responsible for a terrace garden photographed from a covered porch and published opposite p. 367 in Pauline Murray’s Planning and Planting the Home Garden.[7]
At his own home, his site plan design has been transferred with the house, along with other elevations and sketches. It depicts the long axis of two parallel garden beds extending northward from the covered stone porch, itself nestled into the southeast corner formed by the dining and living rooms. The linear beds are on axis as viewed from the living room door to the porch. The north-east quarter of the property is designated “woodland.” Long planting beds, straight walkways, service yard, carefully piled logs of wood, show attention to an organized exterior as well as interior.
The overwhelming charm of this house is evident, and the new owners have preserved the exterior just as they found it including plank wood shutters and hand-crafted hold-backs. They have created a new thoroughly modern kitchen within the old footprint, installed modern baths and closets without making any exterior alterations or additions. Therefore, this house has earned the highest award – for Preservation – that has ever been presented by the New Canaan Preservation Alliance.
[1] New Canaan Historical Society Annual, Vol.5 Number 2, p137
[2] New Canaan Tax Assessors Property Records
[3] “Calvin Kiessling, Architect, Dies”, New Canaan Advertiser July 5, 1956, 1-4
[4] Lake, Eleanor “The Weed-Vanderhoff-Adams House” and Carlton Raymond Jr “The Bouton-Keeler-Kiessling House” Landmarks of New Canaan New Canaan, New Canaan Historical Society, 1951, pp 450-457
[5] “Another Community Theater Planned for New Canaan” New Canaan Advertiser, Oct.5 1922.
[6] Building Conservation Architects, “Early Twentieth Century Architecture in New Canaan” New Canaan Mid-Century Modern Houses, CT Commission on Culture and Tourism, 2009
[7] Murray, Pauline, Planning and Planting the Home Garden., NY: Orange Judd Publishing Co, Inc. 1932
River House, 143 Valley Road
Valley Road is the upper part of a long, ancient road from Norwalk to Wilton, laid out by farmers and millers living and working along the Silvermine River, the western branch of the Norwalk River. It was part of the “Huckleberry Path” continuing down Silvermine Road. On the 1856 map along the river, half way between what is now Huckleberry Hill and Silvermine Road was the hamlet of Daniel’s Mill with a sawmill, turning mill with nine nearby houses; by the time of the 1867 map it had a school house. Farther south was another mill where the river and the road were the closest, and an ancient cemetery just south of it. Between those two landmarks – mill and cemetery – the Silver Hill Foundation was located by 1935.[1] It was the Cruickshank property – a house, stable and barn that the newly organized team of Dr. John A.P. Millet and psychiatric nurse, Elvira Parsons, purchased and furnished with antiques.
In 1945 a stuccoed house across the road was purchased by the Foundation directly from the Brinley family, now called the River House. This English country style two-bedroom cottage had been designed in 1913 by Austin W. Lord of Lord and Hewlett Architects, New York City for his Silvermine neighbor, the artist D. Putnam Brinley. Lord was also dean of the Columbia School of Architecture and Design. The house was inspired by “Datchet House,” the ancient 1640 Brinley house in England, and a similar one built by a descendent in 1723 in Roxbury MA. This one however contained a two-story studio with good north light for Brinley’s large scale paintings and murals. The great polished steel two-tiered chandelier in the studio, all other light fixtures, candelabra, and hardware, were hand made by Orlando Malone, a local blacksmith. The walls were pure white plaster with dark oak trim, except on the second floor where the trim was painted white. Brinley painted a mural above the dining room fireplace, depicting a village fair[2]. For the rest of their lives he and his wife spend part of their summers at that the house.
D.Putnam Brinley was born in Newport, RI in1879, attended the King School in Stamford, the Dwight School in New York City, then the Art Students’ League. In 1904 he married Katherine Sanger, a writer and linguist. They lived in Paris for four year where she studied the arts and crafts of the Middle Ages and became an expert in the English language and in 14th century English; he studied art independently and became a member of the Modernist circle of painters[3]. A member of the committee for the original 1913 Armory Show in NYC, he helped hang paintings, including his own “The Emerald Pool”, depicting a scene on the Solom Borglum estate in Silvermine, which then hung in the Valley Road house. He was too tall to enlist in the U.S. Army during World War I, so offered his services to the Paris YMCA and was appointed director of decoration attached to the Second French Army. Brinley traveled on a special pass, painting colorful murals in the foyers of centers to which soldiers retired briefly from the front to rest and write letters home. He turned to mural painting when he returned home in 1919. Among his major projects is a history of World War I in twenty-four decorative maps in the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, MO. Major New York City commissions were an historic series at the Brooklyn Savings Bank, the Great Terrestrial Globe inn the New York Daily News Building, the “Story of Huck Finn” in the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, and the “Gospel Story” for St. George’s Church in Bridgeport.[4]
In 1912, the year prior to the building of the Brinleys cottage, Austin Lord’s daughter, Margherita, married his former architecture student, Alfred Mausolff. At the wedding at the Lords’ home in Silvermine, the artist D. Putnam Brinley was their best man[5]. Mausolff, in turn, designed a similar Romantic style stucco cottage for his own family and office in 1927 near his older friend Brinley’s house, and that too joined the Silver Hill campus in 1945, now called Scavetta House[6]. Two years ago we celebrated the rehabilitation and adaptive reuse of the Mausolff house as today the Alliance presents you an Award for a similar rehabilitation of Brinley’s River House.
As published in the Zoning Board of Appeals Application, the alterations for the exterior of River House to adapt it for a hospital residence were:
to create a vestibule on the north side to make an ADA compliant entrance,
to enclose a terrace for a large dining room,
to remove a large, elevated patio on the south side to make it code compliant, and
to provide two walkways and two entrances, one for patients and one for visitors which will be handicap accessible.
The variance was granted due to the hardships of age of the building, health and safety issues, code (including ADA accessibility) issues, topographical issues due to the river and that the building is currently located in the setback.
[1] Fairfield County Atlas 1936, Plate 34
[2] Brinley, Gordon “Home of the Artist, D. Putnam Brinley” The House Beautiful, December 1918 pp 361-363; and “The Residence of D. Putnam Brinley,Esq. at Silvermine Connecticut, Lord & Hewitt, Architects” House & Garden no date, pp36, 37.
[3] Biographical Information from the Brinley Coll of papers at the Archives of American Art.1879-1984: “Biographical Information”
[4] “D.P.Brinley, Artist, Dies” New Canaan Advertiser” Aug 1, 1963.
[5] N.Y. Tribune June 29, 1919, page 11
[6] Ames, Margaret G and Marjorie W Grigsby, Silver Hill: A Retrospective
120 Main Street (Blue Mercury)
In The Making of Main Street Mary Louise King describes Main Street as “…the most traveled stretch of highway in New Canaan.” It was called Upper White Oak Shade Road, and in the 18th century it led down from New York State, past the Meeting House to Five Mile and Ring’s End Landings in Norwalk, where shoes, lumber, farm produce, and hay were piled onto sloops and freighted to New York. The oldest surviving shop is the one on the corner of Main and East Ave, built in 1804 by Benoni St. John for his grocery store, behind which he soon attached his dwelling house. At the time there was just a handful of houses and shops between God’s Acre and Cherry Street. Soon a large shoe factory was built where the fire station is now, and then a tannery, a carriage factory, another grocery and dry goods store, a hatter, a milliner, a tailor around the corner on East Avenue, a blacksmith shop and another shoe factory called the Great Western, now moved around the corner onto Burtis Ave, as the Rockwell Gallery. Some built shops, others moved into existing houses. “While the west side of Main Street remained almost rural, thanks to the large landowners, the east side in the 1830s became a checkerboard of stores, houses and factories.”[1]
By 1851 this section of Upper White Oak Shade was known as Trade Street. From the current Firehouse to Cherry Street, there were at least five shoe manufactories, four general stores, a meat market, a shirt factory, drugstore, tailor’s shop, “hattery”, a blacksmith shop and the beginnings of a hotel, along with a scattering of houses as well.
The 1878 bird’s-eye view on the village shows the “Big Shop” shoe manufactory, Baptist Church (Aloi Restaurant) and a furniture dealer and undertaker in the Hall Buiiding, (Italianate house with widow’s walk, now Ching’s Table) followed by smaller wood frame shops and a residence at the corner of Forest Street. Past East Avenue stood the St. John shop and house, followed by two more wood frame shops, and then a large, brick masonry multi-shop structure, rebuilt and called the Raymond Block in the early 1920s, now resurfaced with vertical planks. Nestled right next to it to the south of was a small, one-story wood-frame structure with double storefronts, – now 120 Main Street. An early photograph taken prior to 1898 shows it as a Meat Market.[2]
Over the years Its retail tenants were varied – by 1901 they sold Ladies Furnishings from Louis Silverberg and Boots and Shoes from F.C. Benger. The Central Pharmacy (Coe’s Drug Store) was also an occupant. From 1924-1940 it housed G.C. Murphy’s Variety Store, which then moved to Elm Street.[3]
By 1932, in the town directories, the stores had addresses, but the odd numbers were on the east side of Main Avenue. On the corner of Main and Burtis was #119, the New Canaan Savings Bank built in 1929); then at #113, 115, 117 was three-story masonry building with a wood “boom-town” façade in the Colonial Revival style, housing a group of tenants: on the first floor, E.J. Brown Meat Market Co. and the Walter Stewart Co, Grocer. Somewhere there also was Mrs. Beverly D. Dillas, Beauty Shop, and a boarder, Sirois Thomas. Then the one-story, shingled, double store-front containing DeWitt R. Merritt, jeweler and Murphy’s Variety Store
In 1938 there was G.O. Everett, Men’s Furnishings and C. Murphy, Variety.
Wit Ward, Antiques located in one of the shops by 1944, the other was vacant. Walter Stewarts Market had taken over the most of the three-story building next door.
By 1946 our little shop housed the New Canaan Grain Company and Fred L. DeWitt Co, undertaker and cabinetmakers. Stewarts now had the entire building next door.
1948 One of the shops was vacant and Fred Dewitt was now selling hardware, not coffins. Within ten years Walter Stewart’s Market had moved to Victor-Christ-Janer’s Modernist headquarters on Elm Street.
Hilbert Brothers Antiques was across the street on the southwest corner, at #108 Main Street, as listed in 1938, and eventually at #2-4 Elm Street. They bought the little building across the street for their shop around 1950. In 1980 they retired, advertised its sale in the Wall Street Journal and the current owner’s late husband saw the classified ad, quickly met the asking price and it was sold.
The first tenants, a decorator and an architect, Jane Perrin and Mike Sharp, restored the cut singles and brackets of the Queen Anne style façade, renovated the interiors and designed the single central door front, with Dean Telfer, architect. The original tin ceilings were aligned, the skylight in the rear opened up, chestnut beams exposed, arched millwork installed and old wood floors refurbished. A member of the Planning and Zoning Commission at the time (now its chairman) was so enthusiastic about the plans it had just approved, he wrote a letter to the editor, ending with “Finally we have a store which did not try to board up the old building with some glittering façade, but restored the building with taste and respect.[4]”
The following year, however, the partnership dissolved and new tenants were sought: New Canaan Antiques, a consortium of antiques dealers created a mini-mall of dealers, including renovating the lower level for the Main Street Cellar Antriques, designed by Walter Tippman, taking advantage of the slope of the land allowing full windows and an exit along the east elevation. The basement stairs originally came up under the sidewalk outside the store; at this time they were moved to inside the main floor shop. This business closed in 2004, after half a century of housing the antiques trade.
In 2011, after the departure of her tenant M Milestones, the owner, an exceptional steward for the past thirty years, thought it wise to create a separate entry for the lower level so it could be entered without going through the main store. At the New Canaan Historical Society she found several old photographs of multiple storefronts over the years, and was inspired by one of the Meat Market showing large arched windows across the front, as well as the Perrin & Sharp multiple arched entrance. The lower level is now rented as a separate shop.
The protection and preservation of this structure since 1870, is to be commended!
[1] King, Mary Louise, The Making of Main Street, New Canaan Historical Society 1971, p16.
[2] “The Nostalgia Corner: Putting meat on New Canaan tables”, Advertiser , Feb 12, 1981
[3] “”Hilbert Bros. Location Has Housed Many Early Businesses” Advertiser, Sept 14, 1967 p14.
[4] Papp, Laszlo, FAIA Taste and Respect New Canaan Advertiser.
112 North Wilton Road History
The 1856 New Canaan Map shows Smith Ridge coming north from the Village, making a sharp turn west onto what is now Michigan Road, then a sharp turn right up to Vista. At that intersection, where the Fancher-Carter house now stands North Wilton Road began. Note the SH for School House just north of it.
This out-lying hamlet, one of several in New Canaan, was named “Smith Ridge” and consisted of a grocery store, post office, and schoolhouse. In the 17th c it was at the important cross roads north to New York state, west to Lockwood’s mill and upper White Oak Shade (Oenoke Ridge), east to Wilton and Danbury, and south to Norwalk.
Darius Fancher bought property from the Wakeman family around 1850 and he maintained a country grocery store and the Smith Ridge post office nearby. There was a district school house on the property and both it and the store were moved to behind the Keeler property on the east side of Smith Ridge, now #61 North Wilton Road.
The original Fancher house burned down in late April, 1897, and soon after a new house, in a simplified Queen Anne style, was built on the old foundations. In that year the property was owned by Albert Romain and it changed hands five times in the next ten years, when finally Joseph W. Lockwood obtained it in 1907. He remained there until he sold it in 1921 to Edwin F. and Caroline H. Bouton, who ran Extown Farm on Laurel Road for the town. “Uncle Joe” moved in with the Boutons and remained until the Poor Farm was closed, the farm animals auctioned off, and the Bouton family moved to North Wilton Road, according to their daughter Isabel in ”I remember the Old Town Farm, New Canaan CT.” She recalls going to the district school from Laurel Road in 1916 when it was behind the Keeler house.[1]
Isabel’s younger brother, Edwin H. Bouton, inherited the house and was presented the New Canaan Kiwanis Club’s Distinguished Service Award in 1968 for – among many other contributions to the town – “devoted service to our local POST OFFICE for over thirty seven years, starting four days before your actual graduation from High School and working steadily up to your present position as SUPERINTENDENT OF THE MAILS, faithfully working under four different postmasters, you have been a great factor in making our local office grow in importance and service to its present high standard as a First Class Office.”[2]
After forty-five years of Bouton ownership, Edwin H. Bouton sold the property to Karl and Maryalice Blees in 1966.[3] At that time the tax assessors footprint shows a rectangular building 20’ wide with a one-story addition, 14’ x 19,’ to the west and another 13’ deep across the back of the house. There is a potting shed behind the house, a shop in the yard beside the house with a group of five small structures – maybe bee houses.
The next card, 1970, shows the side addition removed and replaced by a chimney with interior fireplace added to the west. It also shows multiple small additions to the east and north, with a pair only 5’ wide on each side of the house, near the rear. One was two storys high, giving the appearance of a crossing gable. This site plan application in 1970 is for a 1-story addition to the northwest corner of the house to match the one on the northeast corner, but lower.
The current renovation has raised that rear (northwest) addition to two floors and extended the rear of the house two storys, giving it the configuration of a gabled front with a turn-of-the-century Edwardian Box behind, with appropriate Arts and Crafts style dormers.. The rear entrance has been enhanced with terracing. The interior has been partially gutted to open the flow of the spaces from front to back, along the west side; the third floor has been opened to create a large play-sleeping room; and mechanical systems replaced, new up-to date kitchen and bathrooms, and new siding and windows. The original dining room has become a family TV room and the 1970’s heatilator grilles in the fireplace remain.
The historic character of the property exists today not only because of the one hundred year old house but also because of the unusual number of outbuildings still standing behind the house, along North Wilton Road.
There is an eye-catching red and white cattle barn on rubble foundation, with its Gothic style (c1850-60) cupola and a later trellis of wires attached to bring power to the interior where there was a wood-working shop. Nailed to the barn’s south elevation is an old wood sundial facing the house, and there are two sheds attached. Nearby stands a small shop with its original pot-bellied stove; a small shed with a door at the upper level; and behind the barn a well-house on a concrete foundation at an unusually great distance from the kitchen.
The whole ensemble presents one of the most picturesque views in New Canaan, and its preservation contributes greatly to the historic character of our Town.
[1] Bouton, Isabel, transposed by Roger Bouton Lane, Joseph C. Sweet, Editor, I remember the Old Town Farm, New Canaan, CT, New Canaan Historical Society Annual, 2006 Vol XII Number 4. P16.
[2] Copy of the Kiwanis Club’s “Citation to Edwin H. Bouton” in the House Files of the New Canaan Historical Society.
[3] Typed mss “Copy of a record of the files of Edwin F. Bouton” prepared by Isabel Bouton in the House files at the New Canaan Historical Society.
73/75 Elm Street
Elm Street began its life in the winter of 1848-49 when a highway was laid eastward from Park Street to Main Street. Ten years later it was extended to the intersection with Seminary Street. In 1868, when the railroad and the station had been completed, it was renamed Railroad Avenue, and remained so until it was changed back in 1936[1].
In 1923 the Railroad Avenue block between South Ave and Park Street had only one residence on it when the architect Calvin Keissling designed and the town built a Playhouse opposite it. A decade earlier, the Colonial Revival style had been introduced to the village by the construction of Town Hall, the First National Bank next to it, and the Library building farther down Main Street. Now the cupola-ed Playhouse established the Colonial Revival as part of the orderly commercial development of Railroad Avenue, by the Village Improvement Company. The architect Alfred Mausolff, a Silvermine resident, then designed a compatible building across the street for the Post Office, in 1930. However, the Depression and the insolvency of the Village Improvement Company stopped all new construction for several years.[2]
In 1932 the existing shops at #37, next to the Playhouse located at
#37½ Railroad Avenue, housed Pia Serafino Meat, and at #35, Western Union Telegraph Company.
Then, by 1938 a new brick building had been constructed east of the Playhouse, then #37½ Elm Street, by Seamon M. Mead and Charles Maguire. It had two large glass storefronts, each with separate central entries.
The western storefront, #37, housed Dean Stores Inc., Cleaners and C. F. Conner, Clothing. It also had offices for three attorneys and one insurance company, perhaps in the small adjoining wood-frame building to the west but with the same address. The eastern storefront, #35, containing the restaurant Elmcrest, had fluted pilasters supporting a horizontal cornice and a central pedimented entry. The same occupants remained there throughout the war years and well into the 50s.[3].
The upper lights of both the storefronts contained Luxfor prism glass, to increase the amount of light entering the 75’ deep recesses of the shops.
This double building was ornamented by a simple pattern in the brickwork in two recessed panels above the openings, and a raised parapet. This was one of several commercial buildings built to fit the planned Colonial Revival appearance of Railroad Avenue.[4]
This plain little store front, without its recessed entrances and one quirky pedimented doorway, has a more restrained and elegant appearance than it had ever had in its past. Thankfully the current lessee refrained from over-designing the façade of this simple Colonial Revival, brick piers supporting a stepped parapet cornice design and we are grateful for that.
Thanks to the New Canaan Historical Society, its staff, its publications and its prodigious “house” files with old tax assessor’s cards, and “people” files with newspaper obituaries and articles, the history of New Canaan is not lost completely when a house is demolished. What is lost is the tangible evidence our past, the look and feel of the house and how it relates to the land, its outbuildings, barns, trees, and its relationship to its neighbors.
The story of each house has many facets – the history of the road where it is located, its early residents and their occupations, later owners and their accomplishments, how each person is part of the evolution of our community.
We are fortunate to have the Society’s resources to help us recreate sketches of a house’s history to visualize various periods of our past and understand why New Canaan developed physically and culturally as it did. To approach an intersection, such as at North Wilton road, Michigan Road and old Smith Ridge Road, and realize it has looked nearly the same this for over 100 years, just takes my breath away.